Archaeology at London Town

Archaeologists uncover London Town's past by removing and sifting topsoil, scraping the ground with trowels, and recording artifacts and features such as buildings, fireplaces, cellars, fencelines, and trashpits. Remains including pottery, nails, bottle and window glass, bricks, fish and animal bones reveal what buildings looked like and how people ate, dressed, and lived. At Rumney's Tavern, ceramics and bottle glass can be dated by style and manufacture, including a punch bowl made in London, England in the 1720s and a wine bottle from the 1730s. Food evidence such as bones, eggshells, and charred seeds shows what colonists ate, with wealthier residents able to afford mutton, beef, or pork while poorer residents relied more on less desirable cuts, fishing, and hunting; fishing weights, lead shot, flints, and a trigger were found there. Hand-made wrought rose-head nails from the 1600s and 1700s and window leads help show how buildings were constructed. Clothing rarely survives, but shoe buckles, pins, and buttons indicate social status, from simple iron buckles for poorer residents to pewter or silver buckles for wealthier people such as merchant James Dick and tavernkeeper Elinor Rumney, while bone or wood buttons were worn by servants or slaves, copper and silver by planters or merchants, and the finest by the upper class. A neatly sawn sheep skull excavated from Rumney's Tavern points to a colonial meal of sheep's brains. Archaeology also reveals parts of life often missing from written records: clay marbles in the cellar suggest the Rumney children played nearby, medicine vials hint at care within the family, and redware pots and fragments of an iron cauldron reflect the work of servants or slaves who prepared meals and stored food.

Edgewater, Maryland · United States